Intervention principles in pediatric health care: the difference between physicians and the state

MacDougall, Dan

doi:10.1007/s11017-019-09497-6

Cited by 1 publication

(4 citation statements)

References 24 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The first establishes those matters over which society has rightful jurisdiction; the second identifies those matters over which society has justification to intervene. 6 This distinction is crucial. Identifying society's jurisdiction gives us a necessary condition for interference, but not a sufficient one, as there are certainly matters that fall under society's authority that the state would nonetheless be unjustified to interfere in.…”

Section: Mill's Principles For Justified State Interventionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Whether and how Mill's Harm Principle figures in to the HT has been a longstanding point of debate [2][3][4][5][6]. While questions about the relationship between the HT and Mill's Harm Principle have informed many critiques of the HT, there has not yet been a sustained analysis of the HT's conceptual grounds as derived from Mill's socio-political texts, within which the Harm Principle plays an important but discrete role.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Among those proposed: "that 'harm to others' is best understood as 'injury to the vital interests of others', where these comprise the interests in autonomy and in security" [25, p. 57]; that harmful acts "violate or threaten imminent violation of those important interests of others in which they have a right" [26, p. 42]; that harm consists in the "violation of vital interests of others, and not… less weighty matters" [27, p. 161]. In a critique of the HT, D. Robert MacDougall employs a similar, narrow interpretation of Mill's meaning of harm [6]. He observes that Diekema uses harm only in an objective sense (i.e., setbacks to one's interests in securing primary goods), but that Mill is concerned with the liberty to pursue one's subjective interests (i.e., agent-relative constituents of wellbeing that may be objectively harmful, but that the agent determines are good for him).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Diekema gestures toward the state's duty to protect children but gives little consideration to parental duties to their children-absent, of course, those duties not to cause significant harm. That the HT fails to account for special moral roles (such as that of parent or physician), and their corresponding obligations, has been a point of criticism [6]. It would certainly be a distortion of the parent-child relationship to claim that parental duties consist only in obligations not to risk killing, maiming, or disabling their children.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

The harm threshold and Mill’s harm principle

Taylor

2023

Theor Med Bioeth

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The Harm Threshold (HT) holds that the state may interfere in medical decisions parents make on their children’s behalf only when those decisions are likely to cause serious harm to the child. Such a high bar for intervention seems incompatible with both parental obligations and the state’s role in protecting children’s well-being. In this paper, I assess the theoretical underpinnings for the HT, focusing on John Stuart Mill’s Harm Principle as its most plausible conceptual foundation. I offer (i) a novel, text-based argument showing that Mill’s Harm Principle does not give justificatory force to the HT; and (ii) a positive account of some considerations which, beyond significant harm, would comprise an intervention principle normatively grounded in Mill’s ethical theory. I find that substantive recommendations derived from Mill’s socio-political texts are less laissez-faire than they have been interpreted by HT proponents. Justification for state intervention owes not to the severity of a harm, but to whether that harm arises from the failure to satisfy one’s duty. Thus, a pediatric intervention principle derived from Mill ought not to be oriented around the degree of harm caused by a parent’s healthcare decision, but rather, the kind of harm—specifically, whether the harm arises from violation of parental obligation. These findings challenge the interpretation of Mill adopted by HT proponents, eliminating a critical source of justification for a protected domain of parental liberty and reorienting the debate to focus on parental duties.

show abstract

Section: Mill's Principles For Justified State Interventionmentioning

confidence: 99%